Also note that the ATR rule provides additional flexibility to small lenders in that the safe harbor has been expanded to 3.5 percent over the average prime offer rate.

Although the settlement has been filed and agreed to by PNC, it still requires court approval.

State attorneys general extended the national servicing settlement to the nonbank sector with an extra emphasis on servicing transfers.

Analysts forecast uncertainty for the agency MBS market going into 2014 as the policy landscape reshapes itself and investors cautiously adapt to the shape of things to come. Look for 2014 to be a “year of transition” amid a slowly rising range of U.S. Treasury yields, a slowly recovering economy, and a Federal Reserve that transitions away from quantitative easing toward forward guidance, according to RBS analysts. RBS noted...

A long running class-action fraud lawsuit on behalf of Fannie Mae investors and accounting firm KPMG was settled.

The Aug. 28, 2013, release of the re-proposed credit risk-retention rule by federal banking and housing regulators was eagerly awaited by investors and the mortgage industry. But it’s also raised some new questions for securitizers and investors, according to a new white paper from CoreLogic. The proposed rule sets out the risk-retention provisions for securitizers that underwrite ABS, but it also exempts from those provisions all securities issued by the housing agencies, which is to say, MBS generated by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. “Given that exemption, what are the incentives for private securitization where there is capital relief in the alternative?” the white paper asked. CoreLogic notes...

Some 29.3 percent of home purchases completed in November relied solely on cash. That was the third monthly increase in the share of cash transactions.

Unhappy with the fact that newly approved Ginnie Mae MBS issuers aren’t using the program very much, the agency plans to hire more account executives to work with mortgage firms and step up its outreach. “We’ve hired about five new account executives over the past six months,” Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer told Inside MBS & ABS. “That gives us 12.” Tozer noted...

Fannie Mae will take a closer look at transfers to subservicers. The Federal Housing Finance Agency settled a non-agency MBS lawsuit with Deutsche Bank.

This year’s prolonged and bitter political fight to install Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, as the new director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency may turn out to have been the easy part, say industry observers, as he prepares to assume his place as arguably the most powerful mortgage regulator in the U.S. Last week’s 57-41 vote was the second successful confirmation under new Senate rules that essentially eliminated the filibuster for presidential appointments. In November, Senate Democrats muscled through a procedural change that replaced the 60-vote supermajority on nominations with a simple majority vote, shutting down GOP efforts to block Watt’s advance to the Finance Agency’s corner office.